D-Day

“ Modern warfare was seen at Verdun in all its panoply of terror. Amid fire and fury, the rich and fertile countryside was transformed into a vast scene of ruin and desolation, while heroism and self-sacrifice abounded on both sides, men were maddened by the frenzy of the fight and the ghastly horrors of night and day, and Death stalked gloatingly and glutted, but never surfeited, over the bloody field.
The German attacks followed one another so fast and so furiously that the weeks of fighting became one prolonged battle, and a description of one attack will almost serve for all. ”

“ The night of D-Day was typical for the ground troops. By 1800, darkness had set in and the men all knew the iron-clad rule: be in your foxhole and stay there. Anyone moving around out there was a Japanese soldier trying to infiltrate. John A. Monks, Jr., quoted a Marine in his book, A Ribbon and a Star:
From seven o’clock in the evening till dawn, with only centipedes and lizards and scorpions and mosquitoes begging to get acquainted—wet, cold, exhausted, but unable to sleep—you lay there and shivered and thought and hated and prayed. ”

“ Elsewhere he had lost hundreds of his beach defenders in fighting across the front throughout D-Day, and in his uniformly unsuccessful night attacks against the beachhead. Nevertheless, he still had several thousand determined warriors, trained and armed. They were deployed throughout strong and well-protected defensive complexes and fortifications, with ample underground support facilities. All were armed with the discipline and determination to kill many Americans. ”

“ ARMY MEDICS ADMINISTERING BLOOD PLASMA to a survivor of a sunken landing craft on Omaha Beach. D-Day casualties for the V Corps were in the neighborhood of 3,000 killed, wounded, and missing. The two assaulting regimental combat teams lost about 1,000 men each. The highest proportionate losses were taken by units that landed in the first few hours, including engineers, tank troops, and artillerymen. The D-Day casualties of V Corps were much higher than those suffered by VII Corps, where the assaulting seaborne division lost 197 men, including 60 lost at sea. ”

“ As we honor the heroes of D-Day and World War II, it is fitting to include among them the civilian American merchant mariners who sailed in harm's way to supply the needs of our Allied fighting forces. ”

“ Day after day the American troops moved slowly forward, over rugged, difficult ground, broken by ravines and steep hills, through dense underbrush, in the face of deadly fire from artillery and nests of machine guns hidden in every vantage point, through incessant rain and mud and fog and penetrating cold, pushing the enemy steadily back, until they reached Sedan, cut the German Army’s most important line of communication, and so brought the end of the war in sight. ”

“ The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. ”

“ Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940–41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory! ”

“ It is an odd trick of fate that the great war should be commemorated by a day known popularly and widely as Armistice Day. Here was the greatest struggle men have faced since the Ice Age nearly ended the human race altogether. It held a medley of surpassing heroism, false hopes and tragic loss. And the chance which fixes the myths of history has singled out for a permanent celebration the day on which a temporary cessation of hostilities was negotiated. ”

“ We cannot crown observance of Memorial Day more worthily than to make a renewed determination to change the battle that our international enemies started as a war to our destruction into a final German victory.
So we enter the year 1941, cool and determined to end what started the year before. It is quite immaterial what part of the earth or in which sea or in what air space our German soldiers fight. They will know they battle for fate and freedom and the future of our people forever. ”

“ We shall bomb Germany by day as well as by night in ever-increasing measure, casting upon them month by month a heavier discharge of bombs and making the German people taste and gulp each month a sharper dose of the miseries they have showered upon mankind. ”

“ This year on Veterans Day, we celebrate the 80th anniversary of the armistice that finally silenced the guns of World War I. Millions of brave Americans marched into Europe and into the brutality of trench warfare to fight that war. ”

“ Armistice Day, the 11th of November, should be made sacred throughout the entire civilized world. It is the day when we think of the noble sacrifice made by the hero dead, of the brilliant records of duty performed left on the field of battle by those wounded, of the spirit of patriotism and bravery shown by those who, fortunately, escaped shot and shell.
On this day let us think only of the great cause for which the Allies fought—a splendid cause, one that led to victory and peace. ”

“ Conference with Chief of Army High Command and Chief of General Staff of the Air Force (present were Jeschonnek, Kammhuber, Sternburg and myself) .
“We agree about the promulgation of the D-Day order (X-Befehl) , (X-1, 4 o’clock) and preannouncement to the Air Force (D-Day-1, X-1 day, 7 o’clock) . The ‘Y time’ has yet to be examined; some formations have an approach flight of one hour.” (1780-PS)
Late on the evening of the following day, 9 September, Hitler met with Keitel and Generals von Brauchitsch and Halder at Nurnberg. Dr. ”

“ But come—the war—even its sorrows—are over!
This may be Armistice Night, but never that first hysterical, wild reaction, ignoring still-bleeding wounds—but another trying to imitate it to hide even our scars. The people of the solemn morning and the pensive noon have gone home and changed their clothes, their faces and their hearts. All the signs that are left of the trying day are a few scattered poppies—some of them lying face down in the roadways, crushed in the mud under many feet.
We will remember only the victory to-night. We must laugh again. We feel that we have earned it. ”

“ And the siege goes on. The rifles crack in the trenches, the revealing Bengal lights soar up into the thick night, the search-lights explore the darkness. The sentinels are crouching in the saps and look-outs. The aeroplanes fly and the batteries destroy each other. The pioneers work underground and the mines explode.
“The German soldier will stay at his post in spite of it all, faithful and magnificent. He will stay there as long as his country has need of him, or till he falls for her. Never, at any hour of the day or night, must we forget our valiant and wonderful soldiers.” ”

“ The fat sausage balloons that could be sent up to great heights as a barricade against raiding German bombers, should Hitler ever decide to send them over. Then too there were the French Flying Corps planes that patrolled almost constantly over the city day and night. The army trucks, and small tanks that rumbled through the suburbs day after day. The lorries filled with solemn eyed French troops going up to battle stations. And at night ... the black out. No lights on the streets save the tiny blue flashlights that the people carried. ”

“ The soldier stands there, in the mud and the water, among the wet sandbags pierced with bullets, in the narrow labyrinths of the trenches, behind crumbling walls and among shattered tree-trunks. And that is seen from the seashore where the waves break on the beach to the Swiss frontier where the mountains rise. A hundred thousand men, at this moment, are there, every ten paces, searching the horizon. Behind the sandbags machine-guns are on the watch day and night. ”

“ From an army point of view the probable outcome of an extensive aerial offensive would be still greater. Well-organised bomb raids on German aerodromes during the night and early morning have several times kept the sky clear of hostile aircraft during the day of an important advance. ”

“ The Germans are sending [Pg 154] copious gas shells over while I am writing this, but we have got the gas curtain down in our dug-out and it has been sprayed; all precautions have been taken; so we ought to be all right. There is also a good deal of shelling of a heavier kind going on; our guns are giving the German trenches hell at present; we have kept up a consistent bombardment all day. The Germans are giving us some back now; but I feel quite safe in this dug-out! I am glad I am not on a working party to-night. ”

“ Our land battles during these days are being conducted mainly at night as fights between patrols, the war in the day time being mainly in the air. On October 16th a German plane which had been separated from its escadrille came wabbling over the heads of Major Lawrence’s group and landed in a field alongside them, the occupants being made prisoners. ”

“ Millions of little nickel bullets are ploughed in with the blood of those who died to take the Kaiser to Paris and those who died to keep him out in this fighting across the fields and through the forests, in a tug- of-war of give-and-take, of men exhausted after nights and days under fire, men with bloodshot eyes sunk deep in the sockets, dust- laden, blood-spattered, with forty years of latent human powder breaking forth into hell when the war was only a month old and passion was at a white heat. ”

“ We followed up the German retreat from the Marne, when the bodies of the dead were being buried in heaps and the fields were littered with the wreckage of battle, and then went north to Dunkirk, bombed every day by German aëroplanes, but crowded with French fusiliers, marins, Arabs, British aviators of the Royal Navy, and Belgian refugees. ”

“ Germans were killed in their dugouts half dressed. One of the units of the division captured a colonel and his staff still in his dugout. So rapid was the advance on the first day that the German advance batteries were taken. The French cavalry followed up our advance, looking for a break-through. By night all the objectives were taken and the troops bivouacked in the captured position. During the night Hun airplanes flew low over us dropping flares and throwing small bombs. Next morning the attack started again. We ran into much machine-gun fire. ”

“ Soldiers, in the year of war, 1940, the National Socialist Armed Forces of Greater Germany have won glorious victories of unique greatness. With unprecedented audacity, they have beaten the enemy on land, at sea and in the sky. ”

“ The infidel looks abroad and sees the works of nature, in all their diversity—the mountain piercing the clouds with its snowy peaks, the mighty river, fertilizing, in its course to the sea, the valleys and plains in every direction, the sun in his glory at mid-day, the moon in her silvery splendor, and the myriad organizations from man to the minutest form of insect life, all giving the most irrefutable evidence of a designer and creator of infinite wisdom, skill and power, and yet he says there is no Deity, no Supreme Ruler, but all is the result of blind chance. ”

“ When England and France declared this war, England immediately began a fight against civil life. To the blockade of the World War, that war against women and children, it added this time air and fire war against peaceful villages and cities. In both of these modes of war England will be defeated. The air war that Churchill started will destroy not Germany but England itself. ”

“ After four months, in Summer, the German Wehrmacht, after the successful finish of the Balkan war of 1941, has started the march into the vastness of the Russian space. Battles were fought and victories won which in the far future will be valued as the greatest deeds of glory. Together with their brave allies they had attacked everywhere new Russian armies, had beaten them, eliminated them, in order to ... new masses of men. ”

“ First, this opponent had armed himself for attack to such an extent that even gravest apprehensions have been surpassed. Second, God's mercy on our people and the entire European world if this barbaric enemy had been able to move his tens of thousands of tanks before we moved ours! All Europe would have been lost, for this enemy does not consist of soldiers, but a majority of beasts. ”

“ In doing this, your duty, you will not be less courageous than the men of those German divisions who in 1915, on the same Balkan soil, fought so victoriously. You will be humane only in those places where the enemy is humane toward you. Where the enemy confronts you with utter brutality you will beat them back with the same weapon. ”

“ You have beaten the enemy forces with the force of arms, and have conquered territories which had already been conquered morally, thanks to your exemplary conduct and discipline. Thanks to your good fellowship, it has been possible to transform the apparently vain and heroic efforts of the German Armed Forces during the World War into a success, which after a few months of heroic struggle has given you a name in history, and has effaced the shame imposed on us in the Forest of Compiegne. ”

“ When the German soldier shall have proved himself, shall have proved that he is capable of beating the British in the Balkans, in the midst of snow and mountains, then also he will have proved that he can beat the British in the heat of the desert in Africa. ”